Ferret unfazed by big debut

Sammy made his public debut Wednesday night.
The endangered black-footed ferret popped his head out, ran around for a while, then curled up and went to sleep, oblivious or uncaring about the crowd and the gawking children.
Federal officials are hoping Sammy's fellow ferrets will be equally at ease on the prairie of Fort Carson next year.
Fort Carson officials, working with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and Cheyenne Mountain Zoo, which breeds the ferrets, are exploring a program to release the ferrets in a southern portion of the Army post in Pueblo County. It would be the 19th ferret reintroduction in the nation and the third in Colorado, the first east of the Continental Divide in the state. The site was chosen because of its large prairie dog colony, the ferrets' preferred food.
At four years old, Sammy is too old to be part of the release, though he will be on display at the zoo.
North America's most endangered mammal, the ferrets once roamed the Great Plains, but habitat destruction, widespread poisoning of prairie dogs by farmers and the introduction of nonnative diseases, such as the plague, decimated them. They were extirpated from Colorado by 1946 and have been considered endangered since 1967. Their numbers increased from only 18 in the mid-1980s to around 1,000 today.
About 30 people attended an open house at the zoo Wednesday on the proposed reintroduction. Many were zoo workers, biologists or federal officials, who have a lot of different reasons to hope the Army and Fish and Wildlife Service decide to reintroduce the ferrets.
Biologists want to see if they can survive the plague, which has appeared in prairie dogs there in the past. Army medical scientists want to see if spray and inoculations can prevent the plague. Conservationists want to see if the ferrets can be reintroduced on Colorado's Front Range.
Nine-year-old Hagen Davis has her own reasons.
"I think we should help as people, to have it not be extinct," said Hagen. "I think it's great just to bring them back to another state."
"She's been wanting a ferret for a long time, but not one of these," said her mother, Misty Davis.
Success is far from guaranteed.
Scott Larson, head of the ferret reintroduction projects for the Fish and Wildlife Service, said several past releases have failed, some in as little as a year, as occurred at one site on the Fort Belknap Reservation in Montana.
"Plague hit the area the year after we put ferrets in there and we don't think any survived," Larson said.
Property owners - though there aren't many in the remote area - would still be able to control prairie dog populations, and the Army would keep using the area of the ferret release for training.
"We're very willing to partner, if we can do it in conjunction with our military training mission," said Tom Warren overseeing the project for Fort Carson.
Releases would begin next fall and would eventually involve releasing 20 to 30 ferrets. The population would initially be studied for five years.
"There is some really great hope in this site," said Tom Dougherty, consultant to the National Wildlife Federation.
Said Chris Caris, who brought his daughter to the open house, "Hopefully there will be ferrets here for my daughter to look at some day."